In 1974, Karen Silkwood, a technician and union activist at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron plutonium plant near Crescent, Okla., died in a car crash while on her way to meet a reporter.

In 1985, some 23,000 residents of Armero, Colombia, died when a volcanic mudslide buried the city.

Ten years ago: Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who had refused to remove his granite Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse, was thrown off the bench by a judicial ethics panel for having “placed himself above the law.” Eric Gagne of the Los Angeles Dodgers won the National League Cy Young Award.

Five years ago: A wind-driven fire erupted in Southern California; the blaze destroyed more than 200 homes in Santa Barbara and neighboring Montecito. Investors did an abrupt turnaround on Wall Street, muscling the Dow Jones industrial average up more than 550 points after three straight days of selling. Colombian rocker Juanes won five awards, including record of the year and album of the year, at the Latin Grammys in Houston. Cleveland’s Cliff Lee won the American League Cy Young Award.

One year ago: The Pentagon said it was looking into more than 20,000 pages of documents and emails between Marine Gen. John Allen and Florida socialite Jill Kelley. (Kelly had reportedly received threatening emails from Paula Broadwell, the biographer who had an affair with Gen. David Petraeus.) A week after winning a ninth full term in Congress, Jesse Jackson Jr. left the Mayo Clinic, where he had been treated for bipolar disorder. The Chicago-area Democrat had rarely appeared in public since taking medical leave in June. Davey Johnson of the Washington Nationals and Bob Melvin of the Oakland Athletics were named managers of the year by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

Thought for Today: “As you live, believe in life. Always human beings will live and profess to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes slowly, because time is long.” — W.E.B. Du Bois, American author and reformer (1868-1963).